Study Japanese with Suzumiya Haruhi

[Smidge204]

Getting bored, I made a PHP script to do some statistics on the Haruhi novels. The good news it, you only need to learn 2,792 unique symbols (Kanas, Kanji and punctuation) in order to read the first eight volumes!

http://www.sonicfangameshq.com/smidge/h ... /index.php

Can't guarantee it's 100% accurate, since I only spent about 5 minutes on the core code and the source data is not completely uniform... BUT it's pretty good. Also note that it just counts individual symbols, which are mixed and matched to create actual words, so providing translations for all the seperate kanji would be meaningless.

Enjoy anyway!
=Smidge=

[Setherzam]

I know like... 15? and thats because its simliar to chinese

[Stratosphere]

Hurray for the 26 letter English alphabet.

[TheGiftedMonkey]

Yeah, I feel we win in that department Strat.

[Smidge204]

Yeah, but in English we have these things called phonemes which actually make it much more difficult. English has many times more "sounds" than Japanese, which is partly why Japanese couldn't be reduced to a purely alphabetical system - not enough sounds to represent all possible words without duplicate or excessively long spellings.

=Smidge=

[FatPianoBoy]

Getting bored, I made a PHP script to do some statistics on the Haruhi novels. The good news it, you only need to learn 2,792 unique symbols (Kanas, Kanji and punctuation) in order to read the first eight volumes!

http://www.sonicfangameshq.com/smidge/h ... /index.php

Can't guarantee it's 100% accurate, since I only spent about 5 minutes on the core code and the source data is not completely uniform... BUT it's pretty good. Also note that it just counts individual symbols, which are mixed and matched to create actual words, so providing translations for all the seperate kanji would be meaningless.

Enjoy anyway!
=Smidge=

Guess I better get crackin'

Counting kana and punctuation, I probably know less than 500 unique symbols well enough to read unassisted.

I'm actually going to use this list as a study aid. Thanks a lot.

[andyscout]

Engilsh is a bad language. I didn't realize how much so until I started learning Spanish.

But only 26 characters is a plus!

The only character I know is "no."

(EDIT: lol. word filters. shitty...)

[obaka-san]

thanks smidge, you just won my teddy bear!

[Captain]

Hahaha so if I wanted to read these novels I'm guessing I would need a rather good command of Japanese wouldn't I? I was actually about to ask something about this. Thanks Smidge204!

[ainsoph9]

Wow! That list was an eye-opener. I still have a long ways to go. I think I only know a few hundred kanji at best. Maybe I should join my friend on his kanji learning spree next year...

[Guest]

Yeah, but in English we have these things called phonemes which actually make it much more difficult. English has many times more "sounds" than Japanese, which is partly why Japanese couldn't be reduced to a purely alphabetical system - not enough sounds to represent all possible words without duplicate or excessively long spellings.

All languages have phonemes (except sign-languages etc.). Your post sounds mostly like you've heard these words somewhere, but you are using them in such a way that I have have no idea what the rest of your post means. My apologies for that.

Japanese has fewer phonemes than english. A phoneme is an abstract construction - it's basically the idea of a sound. A phone is (something closer to) the realisation of sound in the real world, but a phoneme is the idea of that sound that is used by language. etc. A phoneme contains within itself allophones - in Japanese, [h] and [ɸ] are allophones of the same phoneme /h/. Or used to be, I guess, due to loans and such... This is why you see both <hu> and <fu> romaji.

An alphabet is a writing system where, ideally, each phoneme is corresponded by a grapheme. "A" stands for the phoneme /a/ or /ɑ/ or whatever, while <b> stands for /b/ or whatever is agreed upon within that writing system. Alphabets, in contrast with other types of writing system, have separate and equal symbols for consonants and vowels. English has possibly the least ideal alphabetical orthography in the whole wide world. Maybe something like Old Irish was worse. French is somewhere a close third or the like.

The kanas are syllabaries. Ideally, each grapheme of the system corresponds to a single possible syllable, but even for a language like japanese, with its simple C(y)V(n) syllable structure, it would be too bothersome to create symbols for all possible syllables. But it's close enough. Though I guess if you consider the morae instead of syllables.. Then it would make sense to have a separate <n> symbol. A "morabary"?

A writing system (though they tend to gain a life of their own as time goes by) is basically just a means to transcribe speech into writing. Because the japanese get on quite well in the real world by speaking (with phonemes, as it were), this is a good indication that any claim that it is impossible to write japanese without kanji is nonsense. All languages have homonyms, and they get along just fine. Japanese is no special or "special" case in this.

Any problems caused by a shift from kanji to kana would be fixed within a generation or so, probably less.

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Kristian Järventaus

[Smidge204]

You know what's fun? When someone takes a choice quote from a post out of context and writes an unnecessarily long diatribe about why it's "wrong." Especially when they end up saying more or less the exact same thing but in a more verbose fashion.

Good times are surely to be had by all!
=Smidge=

[Guest]

You know what's fun? When someone takes a choice quote from a post out of context and writes an unnecessarily long diatribe about why it's "wrong." Especially when they end up saying more or less the exact same thing but in a more verbose fashion.

Good times are surely to be had by all!
=Smidge=

I had to confirm with my other linguist friends and the overall reaction to your post was "wtf". Due to no fault of your own: there are so many misconceptions about linguistics that it makes my brain hurt. I've come to recently realize how agonizing it is for people in even more misconcepted fields.

To prevent accusations of taking quotes out of context, I've preserved your whole post here, including the signature that I snipped the last time.

Also, thanks for all the translation work you're doing, I love you guys, really. T_T

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Kristian Järventaus

[Smidge204]

Yes, but the two posts before mine are also part of the context.

Them: "At least English only has 26 letters in the alphabet."

Me: "But spoken English is much more complex, plus Japanese doesn't easily lend itself to a proper alphabetical system."

That's the list of it, anyway.
=Smidge=

[Guest]

Yes, but the two posts before mine are also part of the context.

Them: "At least English only has 26 letters in the alphabet."

Me: "But spoken English is much more complex, plus Japanese doesn't easily lend itself to a proper alphabetical system."

That's the list of it, anyway.
=Smidge=

And that's what's wrong. Japanese is perfect for a proper alphabetical system. Any language is.

It's english that doesn't fit in with the latin alphabet, really. So many phonemes, so little letters. You could figure out digraphs and such-like, of course.

And it doesn't help that instead of writing proper 21st century english, the anglophone world is stuck in 17th century mode at best.

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Kristian Järventaus